Brian Setzer: The 5 Best Guitar Solos Ever

The rockabilly god gives us his favorites

We understand: If you came of age in the '90s, there's a good chance the name Brian Setzer brings back memories of that delightfully weird time, circa 1998, when out-of-nowhere big bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Cherry Poppin' Daddies (that name!) suddenly found themselves with legitimate radio hits. Enter Setzer, whose cover of Prima's "Jump Jive an' Wail" with his Brian Setzer Orchestra was also a bonafide smash. But wouldn't you know it, Setzer is better known as a guitar maestro, the ax-slingin' rockabilly badass who first came to prominence in the early '80s with his band Stray Cats. This week, Setzer revisits his early inspiration with Rockabilly Riot: All Original, a follow-up to his 2005 tribute to Sun Records. "This one just spoke to me," he says of the 12-track LP recorded in Nashville with longtime producer Peter Collins. "Once you get that idea of what you wanna write, you get excited about it. And once you move in that direction they do come hot and heavy. It really is a gift from somewhere. The songbird comes."

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Like many of rockabilly's finest practitioners, Setzer is one cold-blooded guitarist. Who better than he then, we thought, to dish out his five favorite (and most inspiring) guitar solos of all time. Check out his selections below.

1. Bill Haley & His Comets, "Rock Around the Clock"

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"Danny Cedrone was [the guitarist on this track's] name. He fell down the stairs the next week and broke his neck. So yeah, he did that solo and fell down the stairs. It's unbelievable bad luck. So when he recorded that solo, he was fresh out of the Benny Goodman Orchestra. He was a jazzer. And he probably was told: 'This is a new kind of music. It's what the kids like. So do something crazy!' So that was his idea. But he's coming from the jazz world."

2. Gene Vincent, "Be-Bop-A-Lula"

"Cliff Gallup [the guitarist with Vincent], he's coming out of Virginia. He's got more of the Chet Atkins country thing. And he does it beautiful. It's very subtle, it's not over your head. That very sexy picking, single-string solo. But both [he and Cedrone] were on the airwaves. But both fell into the rockabilly world. It kind of blurred the genres. I think that's what's cool about it. A lot of people say it's limiting. To me it's not because you can draw from all these great wells of blues and jazz and country."

3. Stray Cats, "Stray Cat Strut"

"This might sound bigheaded of me. I thought that up when I was 19 years old. And people still come up to me who play guitar and ask me how I play it. It's lasted a long time."

4. Led Zeppelin, "Whole Lotta Love"

"I can recall hearing it at the beach on AM radio. And I heard the guitar solo. The early '70s [the distorted-guitar sound] really hadn't blossomed yet — besides Hendrix being the guitar god. When I heard the 'Whole Lotta Love' solo, I went, 'Oh my God!' I'd never heard anything like that. That had a tremendous impact."

5. Eddie Cochran, "Somethin' Else"

"It was the whole package. I just wanted to be that. It spun me around and turned my life around. I just wanted to get out of school, get that guitar plugged in, get a look going, and start a band. Cool is cool. It doesn't matter when it's written."